Two more days and I will be home to see my family and home congregation! This semester has flown by. When we get back from Thanksgiving we only have three weeks left in this semester. Wow! We have a Greek test Tuesday night that we are studying. Kind of feels like the holidays are approaching up here due to the weather. We have been about 50 degrees that last few days and it has been rainy yesterday and today.

6 of us went down to help pass out hot dogs and chips to the homeless Saturday. I saw many of the same faces that we saw when we went down to the coffee ministry several weeks ago. This was probably 12-14 blocks from the coffee ministry. They had about 90 people show up. The church that puts this on every Saturday had plenty of people this weekend because The University of South Carolina is on a bye week and little league football is over. There was also another church that comes out sometimes that had clothing to pass out. Blankets must be a real valuable thing because you had to have a picture ID to get one, if they still had one when you got to the table. We passed out a LOT of food. Hot dogs, chips, chili, sweets, bananas and soda. Some people went through 2, 3, 4 times. I couldn’t eat that much, but then again they may not have eaten that day or even last night. It was good to do this. The bad thing we realized on Sunday when it was 50 and raining, heavy at times, is that these same people have to go out in this to find food today and every day. They need to stay dry and warm, yet even if they find a place that fits those needs, they have to get out, probably carrying everything with them, and go find food. Rain or shine. It can get to you if you think about it much. Of course, some people there we not homeless, they just don’t have any money for food once they pay their rent, utilities, and for a car. This allows them to get some food and yet keep their place so that they don’t become homeless also. This is a good thing. I talked to one guy out there that said he can stay at his mother’s house whenever he wants, he just prefers to be out with his friends. Some are out there because they choose to be, some have been out there so long they don’t really know anything else, some would give anything to get back into society. It seems to me what keeps most of the ones that want out but can’t get out is an addiction or some sort of mental illness. They can’t qualify for the programs to get them back on track because they are using or drinking. The ones with mental illness probably need someone full time as a caretaker to make sure they take medicine and don’t do anything harmful to themselves or others. That’s pretty hard when you can’t even earn an income to keep yourself off of the street.

As Thanksgiving approaches I hope we all take a moment to think about what we are thankful for and to thank those around us that we feel this way about. We don’t say or act it near enough. I am thankful for everyone in my life. I have gotten to the point where I don’t really dislike or hate anyone, I more feel sorry for what causes them to be the way they are. At least at this time I hope I am learning from everyone in my life. I was asked in Spiritual Direction what my “on one foot recital of the law” would sound like. Here goes; “to hand my life to God (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) and trust in him to lead me through it, and to understand everyone I meet from their perspective”. I will leave you with that thought.

Happy Thanksgiving!

The game on Saturday was a blast.  The game was close until the fourth quarter so that kept it exciting.  The half time presentation was great also, as they honored the branches of the military.  At the end they had a fly over with the missing man formation.  I think that is the first time I have been to an event that had a fly over.

Everyone here is studying for the test this week or writing a paper due for the Middlers(2nd year).  Pretty quiet around campus with everyone studying.  Back to another week of studying.

I talked to my former boss last night and they are in the process of trying to wrap up a large chunk of business that I had been working on for about 6 months before I left.  Good to know that business might come around, it will be a good boost in the arm for the company in this economy. 

I think I can start a count down to getting back home and seeing my family and church.  9 days until I am back!  Be safe, be good, spread the good news! AMEN.

Studying for a History of Christianity test next week.  LOTS of information, names, dates, places.  There was a lot going on in the church at this time.  We are working on baout 400 till about 1100.  Many things were going back and forth during that time.  Powere between the Pope and the emperor, the Iconoclasic controversy.  Everytime a new emperor or pope came on the scene things changed.  At one time back then the church owned abotu 1/3 of the property in western Europe.  That seems problematic in itself.  Also learning about the Monastic movement and the monasteries, especially St. Benedict and his rules. Interesting stuff.  In high school and college I never had any interest in this, now it is really interesting to me.  I guess we mature and change.

Looks like I will get to go to the Gator South Carolina game tomorrow.  That should be fun.  Go Gators!  I will let you know.  Sitting in the car dealership to get some warranty work done.  They just told me the car is ready.  Got to go.  God bless you and keep you safe.

Go Dove! Yes we are the LTSS Dove.

We are the LTSS Dove.  Our flag football team is at Luther Bowl in Gettysburg this weekend. The update has come out that we won our first game 6-0 over Chicago seminary (I forgot the name of the school). They have to play possibly 4 games today if they go all the way. You know why I am not there. I don’t come close to having the stamina to do that kind of thing anymore. In the past that wouldn’t have stopped me, but I am getting smarter.


This has been somewhat of a lighter week for us. That has been much appreciated. We have still had homework that is due next week in a paper and an Annotated Bibliography as well as our usual load of reading. We also have a video due in Pastoral Care on December 11th. That date is fast approaching. Chris and I got together this morning and prayed for help as we are using this model called the Holy Ground Model. It is a model of steps that help us to deal with life and life in ministry. It is good, I like having a process (through this class I also find out I am a monkey followed closely by a giraffe), more about that at another time. Monkey’s love process, sometimes more than the results. Who me? Anyway back to the story; it takes a little swimming in the pond to get this model and be able to use it. We are still swimming at this point where the video is concerned. We prayed for help, admitted that we didn’t really understand this and prayed more for the Holy Spirit to come upon us and give us what the Lord wanted us to present for our video. Sure enough out of this meeting came a good narrative and most of a script for the other members of our group to shoot and edit. Our God is an awesome God!  We have 6 in the group so we are able to divide the tasks so that no one gets overburdened with this. Whenever we got together as 6 we did a lot of conceptualizing, but we were not really able to make any progress on details. Today we made great progress on details and I think, after presenting to the rest of the group for input and changes, we are ready to move to the steps of shooting the video. We have 15 minutes to show the video, present a paper about our experience and take questions. That might not seem like much, but you can get a lot of video in 10 minutes. We hope to tell a whole story. By the way our topic is homelessness. This is the project that is behind us going down to the coffee ministry early on Friday morning several weeks ago.


Remember I asked you to think about if God is happy? Here is why. I have been contemplating this for several weeks now; God is our creator, He is active in our lives through at least His Holy Spirit on a daily basis and His Son for our salvation and probably other ways that we don’t realize yet. Given that He is active in our lives and He is our creator (think parent?), does He not grieve over our sinfulness? The closest thing I can relate this too is being a parent. I would grieve in that situation. I have two great kids and I still grieve about certain things. Some of us, as a defense mechanism, need to disconnect from someone when they become especially sinful. Of course, that is a human reaction. I question, how could He be happy when His creation is the way it is? I know that Jesus came to save us, but according to doctrine that is only for those that come to faith and possibly those that were never given the choice (who never heard the good news of Jesus Christ). I go down the path a little ways that He could be happy if Jesus Christ came to save all of us, because He knows the outcome and it is all good. We all come back to him redeemed. Wouldn’t that be great? (I know where you are going with Hitler and Charles Manson and others. I prefer to hope that they are redeemed, which means they would somehow see the light and become remorseful of their sins and because of that Jesus Christ died for them also). At that point His reaction to our sinfulness could be “go ahead, it doesn’t really matter because my Son saved all of you”. I hope and pray that is the case, but have nothing on which to base that theory other than possible interpretation of some scripture. So, since I don’t know this is the case, I have to think that only those that come to faith will be saved, which will leave many wanting in on that day as we continue to increase our lack of respect and love for one another and continue to become a non-worshipping society. If this is the case, how can this not cause grief to our God, our creator? Can you see how He could flood the earth and start over? He has promised to never do that again, but it starts to give me a one millisecond in time snapshot of the emotions He must have. His love is so great that we will only understand it when we are with Him. Are His other emotions that great also? Think of Sodom and Gomorrah, the Great Flood, the wiping out of complete societies in Canaan, the Egyptians. What is your thought on this? If you can’t leave me a comment you can e-mail me at sje0424@yahoo.com . I look forward to replies as I continue on this contemplation. As I am learning here, we discern things individually and in community. Otherwise we are very prone to going down odd paths that lead to wrong beliefs.

Have a great weekend. I leave you with: “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.” Romans 8:26-27 NRSV

It has been a good week.  We got the rest of our tests and papers back this week.  I have gotten at least a 90 on all of my tests and my papers were an A and a B.  I will take all of those and run!  As it gets closer to finals things will naturally slide some as everything comes together at once.  At least it looks like there is some room for that.  I think I am starting to relax just a bit with this. 
We had Homecoming on Friday night.  That was fun.  Halloween costumes, smoked pork, pot luck, band of seminarians played for a while, and a service at 8:00 in the quad.  Fun time. 
We don't have Intro to Bible this week as the professor is out of town.  We do have an Annotated Bibliography due in this class next Monday.  We have all been working on these.  If we have more than 2 formatting errors we get them back to do again.  Not anybody's idea of a fun time.  If anyone reading this is an expert on Chicago Manual Style formatting of bibliography's please let me know, I would love to have an expert set of eyes on this before I turn it in.  We also have a two page paper due in History next Monday comparing St. Augustine's theology to that of Pelagius.  Now that's a barn burner of a topic that should keep us up all night!  I love this place!
It rained most of today and is only 59 heading down to 48 tonight.  In my field church I sang the Kyrie for the first time today.  I have done this a lot but this was a different setting and I have a problem with getting one setting in my head and getting rid of it to put a new setting in my head.  Did that make sense?  Anyway, after practice it went fine, but then I followed it up by starting the wrong Creed.  The challenge here is that our altar is against the wall and we turn to the altar for prayers.  I started, no one followed and I was turned away from them to see what might have been wrong.  Luckily pastor saw what I did and restarted with the correct version.  Oh well, more proof that we are all human.  I seem to love to prove that. :)  Just let me do your will Lord.  What comes from that I am fine with.
How 'bout them Gators!  'nuff said.
There was a weekend retreat to an abbey this weekend.  I just talked with one of the guys that went and it seems like a great experience.  They get up at 2:50am everyday and pray.  They gather to pray 7 times a day, each one being a 30-60 minute service.  I could not go this year as I didn't want to miss my field church.  However, I am hopeful to be able to go next year.  This is the time to experience as much as I can and I can't imagine getting to experience this after I am in a congregation, but who knows what the Lord has in store for me. 
I hope all of you are doing well.  I pray for you and hope that your faith in God deepens and your willingness to turn your life over to His will increases.  Remember the little voice inside is the hardest to hear and follow.  God bless each of you.  Steve